CHARITIES in and around Lancaster are beginning to benefit from the city's controversial voucher parking system. Some disgruntled traders in the city have met councillors half way over the infamous scheme after seeing countless numbers of people given parking tickets outside their shops. Now, shopkeepers who previously refused to sell the vouchers have relented but are donating the eight per cent profit they receive from each sale to local charities.

They include Bernard and Phyllis Collier who run Colliers News on Penny Street. The Colliers decided to start selling tickets after a young woman with two children was fined £20 while hunting for a voucher.

Phyllis said: "The woman was in tears when she realised she had been booked so we decided to sell the vouchers and give the proceeds to charity.

"Some people say they won't come into the shop if we sell the vouchers. Others, usually from outside Lancaster, come in looking for them."

The Colliers will donate the cash they make from the vouchers to St John's Hospice and the Royal Lancaster Infirmary's Macmillan Appeal Fund for a new cancer unit.

Cllr Pat Rye, the chairman of the city council's Transportation Service Group, said: "It is up to these people what they do with their money but we would like to encourage more outlets because we still haven't got enough people selling the vouchers." AS opposition to the parking system grows, The Citizen has received information that the Labour led council is planning to install voucher machines on the city's streets.

Visitors to the city are finding it difficult to get their hands on vouchers with many traders still refusing to sell them. Ticket dispensing machines would allow drivers to pay for their parking without hunting for participating shops. Even that move hasn't managed to dampen the resistance coming from Conservative Party members and Tory MPs in the city.

This week Morecambe MP Sir Mark Lennox-Boyd wrote to town clerk John Burrows calling for a break in the scheme while discussions are held about the way forward. And prospective Lancaster MP Keith Mans was in the city centre again on Saturday collecting signatures on a petition against the scheme. More than 500 names have now been collected. Lancaster and Wyre Conservative Association chairman Joan Jackson was with the campaigners collecting signatures in Market Square.

She said: "Everyone in the city, apart from the Labour council, realises that the scheme is a disastrous step for Lancaster, turning away potential visitors and encouraging people who regularly use the centre to go elsewhere and make use of free parking.

"The petition obviously struck a chord with almost every person saying that they were totally opposed to the scheme."

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